I never considered disobeying an order or even a request from Daddy. I loved and admired him, and one of my preeminent goals in life was to earn his … - Jimmy Carter

All of us have heard about the large oil fields on Alaska's North Slope. In a few years, when the North Slope is producing fully, its total output will be just about equal to 2 years' increase in our own Nation's energy demand. Each new inventory of world oil reserves has been more disturbing than the last. World oil production can probably keep going up for another 6 or 8 years. But sometime in the 1980's, it can't go up any more. Demand will overtake production. We have no choice about that. But we do have a choice about how we will spend the next few years. Each American uses the energy equivalent of 60 barrels of oil per person each year. Ours is the most wasteful nation on Earth. We waste more energy than we import. With about the same standard of living, we use twice as much energy per person as do other countries like Germany, Japan, and Sweden. One choice, of course, is to continue doing what we've been doing before. We can drift along for a few more years. Our consumption of oil would keep going up every year. Our cars would continue to be too large and inefficient. Three-quarters of them would carry only one person--the driver--while our public transportation system continues to decline. We can delay insulating our homes, and they will continue to lose about 50 percent of their heat in waste. We can continue using scarce oil and natural gas to generate electricity and continue wasting two-thirds of their fuel value in the process.

Well, of course, the '78 crops haven't been planted, except for winter wheat. You know, I'm a farmer, and Senator Talmadge is a farmer. Bob Bergland is a farmer. We have a genuine problem. I would say that in the last 5 years that the cost of producing most crops has increased a hundred percent, certainly as far as equipment prices, energy prices, fertilizer prices is concerned. At the same time, most commodity prices have increased very little, if at all. The debt that farmers now hold has increased rapidly. The amount of reserve finances in country banks is down below the historical averages. We do have a good bit of flexibility within the 1977 agricultural act that the Congress passed and I approved last year. We have large reserve supplies of feed grains, food grains carried over. There's no way to predict what the weather will be this year. We've already initiated a moderate set-aside program at some substantial cost to the Government. And we have about 6 or 7 billion dollars in increased payments authorized to the farmers, because of higher target prices and support prices. What else needs to be done at this point I haven't decided. The impact of the new farm legislation has not yet been felt on the agricultural community of our country. It only went into effect the first day of October, and of course, it hadn't gone through a crop season yet. I think there will be some benefit at least from that. I don't see any possibility of lower prices for fuel, nor for fertilizer. I think that there's going to have to be a sober assessment by the farmers themselves of economic circumstances now and in the future. I live and have always lived among and with farmers. My people have been in-my Carter family has been here over 300 years—we've all been farmers, every generation of us. And it's a characteristic of many farmers to spend this year what you made last year. And I think there's been an inclination with the limited acreage to have a heavier and heavier investment in equipment that's very costly. At the same time, of course, yields have gone up. In the long run, the food and feed demands with a fixed or dwindling acreage supply will correct the problem. But at the present time, we have an excess surplus on hand, and as you've shifted from the smaller tractors and livestock cultivation to the very large tractors, you've cut out the windrows and, in effect, you've gone to a fence-to-fence operation. This has amounted to about, I think, a 50-million acre increase in the land being cultivated. So, with our present set-aside program and the present farm program, we have a step in the right direction. And we will assess other factors, the carryover crops, prospective worldwide production for this 1978 year, the lending capability of farm banks, the amount of debt carried over—we'll analyze all those factors and decide whether to use the flexibility in the present law or to ask for additional legislation. We have not yet decided.

There is a remarkable trend toward fundamentalism in all religions — including the different denominations of Christianity as well as Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam. Increasingly, true believers are inclined to begin a process of deciding: "Since I am aligned with God, I am superior and my beliefs should prevail, and anyone who disagrees with me is inherently wrong," and the next step is "inherently inferior." The ultimate step is "subhuman," and then their lives are not significant. That tendency has created, throughout the world, intense religious conflicts. Those Christians who resist the inclination toward fundamentalism and who truly follow the nature, actions, and words of Jesus Christ should encompass people who are different from us with our care, generosity, forgiveness, compassion, and unselfish love. It is not easy to do this. It is a natural human inclination to encapsulate ourselves in a superior fashion with people who are just like us — and to assume that we are fulfilling the mandate of our lives if we just confine our love to our own family or to people who are similar and compatible. Breaking through this barrier and reaching out to others is what personifies a Christian and what emulates the perfect example that Christ set for us.